Spooked - The Perfect Tenant

Episode Date: September 5, 2018

The Perfect Tenant: Steven LaChance found the perfect home… or, did the home find him? Ghosty: When your kid tells you she’s just seen a ghost, you might want to believe her. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Perfect department? Nice neighborhood, plenty of closet space? ample street parking. Sure, sure. Well, there's still one thing. You forgot to check. From Snap Judgment's underground layer, listening to Spoot, Stay. They say we have five senses. But science has known for a long time, but that is not true. We have many, many more senses, many, many more ways to engage our worlds, our environment. But still, if you don't even know what it is you're experiencing, if you can't articulate the mystery, the warning, the dread of a place, it's easy to discount and ignore that feeling. Never.

My name is Ben Washington. Spook starts to protect their people. Privacy, some names in this story have been changed. Here's the scene. Stephen LaChance had a good life, a happy marriage, three wonderful children, and then it all changed in an instant. I came home from work one day. It was night.

And I walked into the house and she, my wife, was sitting on the couch in the dark. She was smoking a cigarette. When I think about it, I see the light from the ash on the cigarette in the dark as it got red and went away. The kids were in bed, and it was at that moment that she started talking to me. She told me she was leaving and that she wanted a divorce. I had no clue. It was completely out of the blue. Things changed very quickly.

we were out of that house within a week. Everything that we owned were, was basically in suitcases. That was it. It was May of 2001. And I remember looking in the newspaper, and I came across an ad that said, the perfect house for the perfect family. And I started reading it, and it was a nice house. He had three bedrooms, and he had a yard, a basement,

everything that you would want. And there was an open house that Sunday. The thing that struck me about the place in the house was that it was like my grandmother's house. It felt like familiar. It smelled like cookies. My daughter noticed it right away, and I thought that was nice. The landlady came in and we met her, and she was very unusual in a lot of ways. First of all, well, she came in, and it's May.

It's warm outside. The landlady came in and she was wearing a red wool jacket over the top of a skirt and blouse that were two different animal prints. And the funny thing about it is on the top of her head, she wore a wig that was kind of shaped like a football helmet in some ways. And it didn't fit her head, so it would constantly creep its way down. and then she'd have to push it back up. I thought she was a strange character. But we decided, you know, after looking at it, that it was the perfect house for us.

We wanted it right away. On the day of the walkthrough, she finally gets there, same outfit, red wool jacket, wearing the wig like a hat, bright red lips, and she takes me into the house and we begin the walk-through process.

We were upstairs and the ice maker in the refrigerator downstairs dropped ice. The moment it happened, I knew what it was, but she practically jumped out of her skin. And she goes, oh, that scared me. And I'm like, you know, I kind of laughed. I said, you know, really, that doesn't make me feel very good. And she laughed and she goes, well, do you believe in ghosts, Mr. Lichens?

And I looked at her, I said, no, I don't. That's ridiculous. She handed me the keys. I signed the final walk-through paper, and it was ours. Moving day comes. The kids were thrilled to have a yard. It was a really good day. I was unpacking inside, and my daughter comes in from outside.

And she said, you've got to see this. And I said, what? And she goes, come here. I remember sitting on the top step of the porch. And somebody was walking down the street. street and she goes, now watch them. And they got to the property line of where the house was, and they crossed the street. They didn't walk in front of the house. She goes, everybody does that. The good things were, you know, the kids were happy and things were going well. It seemed like

the whole white picket fence kind of dream. It didn't stay good very long. It really didn't. I would get ready to go to work in the morning, and I would come home at night, and all the lights in the house would be on. I'm not talking, like, one or two. I'm talking all the lights in the house. To the point that I started thinking that somebody may be coming in. So I was talking to my dad, my dad goes, well, how's life going there at the house and such? I said, what's going good? It's just every time I leave, I come home, and dad, I swear I turn all the lights off. And every time I come back home, all the lights are on. And he said, you know what?

He goes, I had that problem with you kids, too. He goes, it's your kids. He goes, I'll tell you what. This is what I need you to do. He goes, when you get ready to go to work in the morning, you get the kids in the car. Once you get them there, go through the house. Make sure all the lights are off. He goes, because I'm going to tell you what, if a kid passes a light switch, they turn it on.

So I did that. I put the kids in the van in the morning, and I went through the house. I made sure all the lights were off. As soon as I was sure about it, I closed it up, I locked it, I went away. Coming home that night, I found all the lights on again. I remember running through the house. I was looking for someone. I thought somebody had to have come in or somebody had been there.

I called the landlady. I said, did you come into the house? I came home, all the lights are on again. Every time I leave, all the lights are on. And she goes, well, no Mr. Leachance, because if I was to come in, I would have to give you 24. hours notice. And I kind of felt like a fool at that point, didn't I? It was after that, and I mean right after that, that I noticed my son, things started

happening to him pretty quickly. I remember it was the first day we were going to mow the lawn. Then I set my son in to get a garden home. Go in and get the hose. He goes in and I'm doing stuff out there. All of a sudden, I hear him screaming. and I'm in the yard and I go running into the house

and I found him and he was standing in the middle of the kitchen he was white, he was shaking, he was frightened he was standing in a puddle to give you an idea and I ask him what is wrong and he said there's a monster in the basement

now as a parent we all go through this I think the proverbial basement monster thing. So I did the dad thing, you know, I went to the door, and I opened the door, and I looked down, and I'm like, nothing here. I stomp down the steps, nothing here. I looked at the corners, I looked at everything. But from that moment on, every time he was out of arm's reach, I would find him shaken in that kind of state. And it wasn't long after that that my daughter

started coming down in the middle. It was here in boxes, move around. and her closet door wouldn't stay closed. At first, I was thinking, well, maybe it was the move was too much for them. Maybe it was finally the whole divorce now that things seemed calmer here. Maybe the divorce was playing with them. But I really didn't know. At that point, I started to have these dreams, these nightmares. Someone standing over the top of me.

Somebody sitting on my chest. Somebody choking me. I told myself it was nightmares. and nothing more. I was trying to keep rational during something that was very irrational. And then one night, I was sitting in the family room

in my favorite chair, and the kids were playing in the other room. I was exhausted, and I kind of dozed off. And then I woke up. I heard the doors kind of shake, like somebody had their hand on the doorknob and just kind of shook the door. But it wasn't just one of the doors in the house.

It sounded like all of them. You know, at first it was real light. Now, in my mind, I thought it was the boys up running around maybe. I said, cut it out. And that's when my daughter from the bedroom goes, Dad, I'm in here reading and my brothers are asleep. And the moment that happened, those two bedroom door slammed shut. And the best way I could tell you, it's almost like an earthquake.

There's a rumbling going on. And I get to the bedroom door, and I start to open the bedroom door, and it doesn't open. And I can hear my daughter screaming on the other side of the door. And I can hear something coming down the upstairs stairway. Boom, boom. And I start throwing myself against the door and I hear another voice. At one point, I realize it's my own screaming I'm hearing as well.

And I'm throwing my body against this door. Now, I've got to tell you, I'm 6'7. You know, I'm a big guy. I'm a football player kind of guy. And anybody that would throw themselves against the wood door my size would take a door. my size would take a door down. I am throwing my body against this door and it's like I am throwing myself against a concrete wall. And at that point I said, God, help me. And that's when the door gave way and I went bounding into the room. When I get to my daughter, she's in shock. I grab her

and I carry and I run with her out of the room. I look at the boys, I tell them run to the front door because it was the closest door, and they run out the front door, and I could feel something on my feet, but I never turned around to see what it was. That was the last night that we spent in the house. I remember our moving day. The last moment, I'm locking the door to go away, and a car pulls up in front of the house. Out of the back seat of the car comes two small children. And I realize at that moment those are the new tenants moving into the house. And I didn't say anything. And you know what?

I felt really guilty about that for years afterwards. On the same day that we moved, I was in the new house and I was unpacking the truck moving into it. I looked up in the driveway and walking up the driveway, to my surprise, was the old landlady. That big red smile on her face and she's pushing the wig back, which is working its way down on the forehead. I was shocked. there's no way that she would have known where I was living because I never told her and she's like hey you forgot to leave us the key

I felt protective at that point I took the key off the key ring without even looking her in the eye I gave her the key and then she walks down the driveway and she pauses for a minute and she turns around and looks at me and she goes Mr. Lechance I knew you weren't the right family

for this type of old house. And then she turned around, got into the car, and left. Months passed. And you would think with the passing of time, this would all be over. But it was far from over. The nightmares were the worst. And they came back for three years.

You know, there's two types of hauntings. There's a haunted house, and there's haunted people. Somewhere along this line, this haunted house changed, and we became the haunted people. There's still today that I'll wake up and hear screaming. I started telling my story and the local college invited me to come and tell it in front of an audience. What I didn't know is in the audience, there were a whole lot of people that had run at this house from that woman.

I'm finishing up telling the story and I looked out into the audience and I can see what I think is the landlady. She was wearing the red wool jacket and the animal prints and the wig was still perched upon her head like a football helmet and she looked just the way she did years before. I wanted to leave enough time for the question and answer period. She was the first person to stand up and the first person I called up. She tried to deny the haunting. She was asking, why are you telling this story? This is not real. But I didn't have time to even respond.

The audience and all these people that had run it from her through the years took over. They were yelling and they were screaming at her. They were scrambling towards her. The one woman was climbing over seats to get to her. They brought security in. It was complete pandemonium at that moment. This was the woman that had caused my family and myself so much pain. As security led the old landlady away,

I felt vindicated. And that was the last time I ever saw her. Many thanks to Stephen McChance. Check out this book, The Uninvited. And find out more on our website, spookpodcast.org. Now then, your kid tells you that there is a monster in the closet. Find out in just a moment, spooked. Her family moved into a rambling, Victorian mansion, and rural calendar.

Her parents told Ilda and her brother that they would, only be living there for a short time. Ilda hoped that they were right. I'd say I was very much an imaginative kid when I was that young, like a little three-year-old. We had lived in a really small house before this, so this was just enormously massive and seemed like you could get locked in it and never see another person. It felt like there maybe was things lurking around. It just felt like maybe there was.

somebody standing around the corner that you couldn't see. So it always maybe felt like something was going to jump out at you. We were all moved in and unpacked and it's the middle of the afternoon and this bathroom is just like a door down from my bedroom. I think I'm going to go in there and like get a drink of water or something. And so I walk into the bathroom not really paying attention to anything. And look up, and there's this really tall character standing there, brushing his teeth. And he's wearing white thermal underwear, and his skin is, like, white, and his hair is white, and his eyes are gray.

And he turns to me, and he says, my name's ghosty, and if you tell anybody about me, I'll kill you. I got this, like, huge stab of panic, and my... heart started racing and I felt like I was not able to move. And this guy is like completely white, white hair, white skin, white clothes, gray eyes. They're not like human colors. I'm seeing a ghost right now. After he tells me that I'm definitely going to die of I let anybody know that he exists, he turns back to the mirror and resumes brushing his teeth as if I'm not even there.

I stand there for probably 30 seconds but it felt like an eternity and I finally find that I can move my legs again I run down the stairs and into the kitchen

where my mom is washing dishes and I say mom mom I have something important to tell you and I said Gohty's in the bathroom and he says he'll kill me and so she chuckles about it and says that I'm being silly and tells me to go outside and play.

That felt super frustrating, and, like, yeah, after she didn't believe me, I felt, like, very alone. And I assumed that him being a ghost, he had supernatural powers, and one of those powers would be that he just knew everything that was going on in the house. And so surely he knew that I had just told my mom, I actually fearfully go back up the stairs and check the bathroom and I look all over for him in the bathroom

but it's not a big bathroom so, you know, he's not in there. And I get my brother and I tell my brother that I saw a ghosty and he believes me and tells me that he'll go with me to look and make sure ghosty isn't hiding anywhere. So we go and actually check all the bedrooms down the hallway. And then we go back to our room and we decide that we're going to set up all of our stuffed animals in a ring around our bed because Ghostie won't be able to cross the line and kill us in our sleep.

That fear when I, like, moved in of there's something around the corner, it really became strongly amplified after seeing ghosty. And any little creek in the house makes me think that suddenly he's going to be coming for me. Pretty much every night after I saw a ghosty, we end up putting the stuffed animals around the bed in a ring to make sure the ghostie won't come. It was a pretty sunny day, and I'm outside playing with my brother, and we had those yellow tonka trucks,

and so we were playing with those out in the yard. And I feel the hair on the back of my neck kind of stand up and is kind of urge to look behind me. So I do, and it really looks like there's someone standing on the balcony that comes out of my room, looking out across the yard. And he looked exactly the same. way as the first time I saw him completely white clothes and white skin and white hair and everything. I feel this stab of fear, so I look away for a second, and then I look back out of curiosity

and no one's standing there. I definitely went back to playing and did not say anything to my brother about it. I just wanted to carry on acting like everything was normal and not have him freaked out as well. So we were only living in the house for about four months, and then my parents told us that we were moving again and that they bought a piece of property. And I didn't really understand what that meant, but I knew what moving meant. So I felt pretty excited to get out of that house

and move to the next property. Then we started, you know, packing up all our stuff and probably like maybe three days before like our final day in the house. My dad finally decides that he wants to look in the attic and see what's up there because we've never really looked in there and we get the ladder

and open the trap door and climb up there and I hear him say oh shit and I want to take a look and so I climb up the ladder there In the attic is a single bed with a little nightstand next to it

and there's like a pile of dirty laundry There's a bag of half-eaten chips on the bed And there's a shotgun leaning on the wall next to it I told my dad see I think ghost he's been living in the attic But at the time I still I still believed that Ghostie was a ghost. I fully believed that a ghost would need to eat human food and sleep in a human bed.

I guess I felt like, okay, Ghostie was real and here's where Ghostie lived, but it's really scary because Ghostie has a gun, so Ghostie probably not kidding about his threat to kill me. My parents were actually pretty scared that there was a person living in the attic that had a gun and was just sneaking into the house, presumably at night when everyone was asleep, and had just been living there for months without their knowledge. As soon as my dad sees the shotgun,

he decides that that's the last night we're sleeping in the house. And so we packed up all our stuff, and we went to the new house. And I think just him, he went back alone the next few days to get the rest of the stuff at the house. house. I was really excited to move, but I felt like that, unless we did it really quickly or quietly, that Ghostie would know that we moved and he would follow us. And he would set up residence in the new house. And I thought, well, he never followed up on his promise to kill me. So one of these days, when, like, he catches me alone, that's going to be it.

And he probably followed us here and he just waiting for the right opportunity. And so we continued the stuffed animal ritual at the new house for at least a few years. We got you. We got you, listeners. And folks, I'm happy to tell you that Ilda has not encountered any more ghosties ever since. That piece comes to us from Mitchell Johnson. It's every week as we count down to all hallows Eve. Be afraid.

Let someone know. Find us on Facebook, on Twitter, on Instagram, Spook Podcast, ORG. Now, if you want to hear amazing storytelling from a last haunted perspective, check out the Snap Judgment Podcast available right now, wherever you got this one. Spook was brought to you by the team that is never hiding in the closet. Mark Ristich, Anna Sussman, Eliza Smith, Liz Mack, Erica Lance, Mitchell Johnson, sound design, An original score was by Leon Monimoto, Renzel Goryo, and Pat and C.D. Miller.

My name is the Washington, and you have to understand that in this world today, for some people, some people are not your friend. They want to lead you astray. They'll give you bad advice. Well, listen to me. Listen to me when I tell you to ignore them.

And never, never, never ever now.